


Caught in the Wires

by justsleepwalkin



Category: Men in Black (Movies)
Genre: 1969 Kay, Angst, Implied Relationship, M/M, Mild Language, Not A Happy Ending, Post-Movie(s), Time Travel, loose sense of time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-05
Updated: 2015-07-05
Packaged: 2018-04-07 18:59:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4274427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justsleepwalkin/pseuds/justsleepwalkin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Green lightning shudders along cracks in walls, churning in potholes, dancing close enough to Jay's fingertips to burn reminders.</p>
<p>He's not supposed to be here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Caught in the Wires

**Author's Note:**

> a bird, caught in the wires  
> bleating for help I can't provide, I'm not that big  
> I hope for the best but nothing changes, I'm sorry  
> \--Glory; Radical Face  
> [(♫)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-IkdURTOmw)

Jay knows everything is wrong with what he's doing. It breaks all the rules that have been so firmly instilled in his head for so long. Yet he does it, anyway, not a word to anyone. He's just gone, confiscated time jump gear the only thing he needs with him. He feels the press of _time_ all around him, choking him out, and maybe it would okay, really. Maybe he's fine with his last breath being here, now, in the past. 

Kay's older than Jay last saw him, of course. Years have passed since 1969, lines starting to form into his face. Still it's something familiar, painfully so, and Jay feels his eyes starting to prick around the edges. He wants to hug the man, but he holds it all in, tucks it deep down. 

“Hey,” he says, hesitant. “Don't know if you remember me, but... ah...”

“I remember,” Kay answers, frowning. “Now I do, that is. What's wrong this time, slick?”

“Nothing... I just...” He shakes his head. Forces a smile that Kay won't believe for a minute. “I need to sort of just... be here for awhile, okay? Lay low.”

“That a good idea?”

“It's a great idea,” he argues, and maybe it's enough to convince them both, for the moment. 

Zed's around and it freaks Jay out enough to avoid him, and despite Kay frequently chatting with the man, Jay stays away. Blends in as seamlessly as he can, establishing himself as an MIB retainer, even as Kay frowns at him, like Jay's just one awfully large puzzle. 

Jay doesn't want him to solve it. 

There are gaps that start to surround him. He sees them, feels them. Strands of raw time bleeding into spaces around his sides, eating away at scenery. He hears songs that won't be composed for another twenty years, judges condemning offenders for crimes that haven't happened, invasions he helped stop breaking out on repeat—five second sizzle-reels, then gone, back to normal. 

Green lightning shudders along cracks in walls, churning in potholes, dancing close enough to Jay's fingertips to burn reminders. 

He's not supposed to be here. Certainly not for this long. He buckles down under the weight of it all, but he can't go back. He blacks out sometimes, only to jolt forward, Kay gripping his shoulders with barely contained fear. 

“This is killing you, slick. You can't keep _staying here_. What are you hiding from?”

“I can't go back,” Jay rasps, shaking. “I can't, okay?”

Kay wants to say more, but he stops himself. Lets it go. Lets days tick by into weeks. Grows more and more restless, watching Jay closely. 

Jay's grown pallid. He feels thirty years older than his actual age. Time chips away at him, feeding off morsels of his life to try and compensate for his outside-of-time presence. 

“Why are you making me watch you _die_?” Kay asks him, pained, saturated with more emotion than Jay's accustomed to handling. 

Jay's blacked out again. He remembers being the only one to see the younger-era Zed shifting to the older-Zed he knew so well and felt a sharp, icepick sensation strike through his skull, crumpling him. 

“I already watched _you_ die,” Jay murmurs, wishing his vision would return, but all he sees is veins of green streaking over blinding white. “I can't do anything to change it, this time. I can't _save you_.”

Kay draws in a breath. 

Jay pulls himself up into a sitting position, arms clutching around his legs. “I lasted five years without you once, you know,” Jay tells him. “It was awful. I didn't like who I became. Lost sight of myself.” He closes his eyes because then he can fool himself into thinking that his vision is just fine. “I can't do it again. Not this time. You were—” His tongue trips over the words. “ _We_ were more than just partners.”

“I know,” Kay answers, struggling.

Figures he'd already know, Jay thinks.

“ I can't—I _can't_ be a replacement for him. I'm not him, not yet.”

Jay smiles, wide and honest. He opens his eyes. His vision finally starts to return. “You're more alike than you probably think. Caused me a _lot_ of trouble when I came here the first time, and then even more when I went back. Sorta made me love you more than I already had.”

Kay pleads, “ _I_ can save _you_.”

“Sending me back ain't saving me, man. It's condemning me.”

Kay drags a hand over his head in frustration. 

“You'll die here, you realize.”

“Yeah. I figured that one out already on my own. It's what I want, okay? Please, Kay.” 

“He must've had a hard time ever saying no to you,” Kay whispers, defeated. He holds a hand out to Jay to help him up. 

“Naw. You got all your charm and wits, 'til the end,” Jay answers, flashing a grin. 

Kay doesn't manage to grin back. Jay's still in pain. He flinches, sometimes, at what appears to be nothing. Things in his head. It happens with increasing frequency, until one day it's both of them reacting to a crashing spaceship that breaks apart into a wave of green energy, roaring over them, leaving a cloying, static feeling. The empty street that's supposed to be resting before them is gone, splintering into thousands of different instances.

“The space-time continuum is collapsing,” Kay whispers from behind Jay. Jay's glowing, veins lit up like he's radioactive. “You're at the source.”

“So you can see it too, then,” Jay says with a sigh. He laughs, bitter. “Come on, I'm not supposed to _exist_! Doesn't time know that?” He looks sadly over his shoulder. “Swept up in passing, something to be forgotten. Good ol' MIB protocol.”

“You're not _forgettable_ ,” Kay shouts at him. 

“'s'okay. Don't you know? You'll forget me when I'm gone. You did before, after the timeline sewed itself back together. Think the timeline will sort itself out all over again, just the same. But hey, I appreciate the sentiment.” He drops his gaze, head down. “This isn't how I expected anything to go.”

Kay puts a shaky hand to his shoulder. “It never ends up as we planned.”

“ _Kay_. I _don't_ want to go back,” he tells him. He wishes another solution would open before them, but the time energy roils within him and he yells out, knees buckling, crashing into Kay. “Dammit. _Dammit_!” The street around them fractures further, in sync with Jay's agony. He groans and ducks his head into Kay's suit jacket. 

“You have to go,” Kay says, quieter than before. 

“I need somewhere to jump from. Empire State Building, preferably, since I know it works. If the timestream hasn't gobbled it up already.”

Kay nods, arms around him, keeping them there. Jay focuses on Kay's pulse and not the awful 90s pop choruses he hears twining with the wind. 

“Come on.” Kay half carries him along, wobbling shoulder to shoulder along the frightfully empty NYC streets. Kay's car isn't drivable. It's taken on components of four different models, their wheels throughout their partnership. The elevator almost doesn't work, rattling and sputtering during its ascension, but it makes it most of the way, and they take the stairs for the rest, silent, resigned. 

Jay palms the Price time jump gear into his hand, shaking his head. This high up, he doesn't recognize what's become of the city, and it's his fault. His being here. His running away. Maybe this is one of the reasons MIB made time travel illegal. What a mess. _And yet_ still... Just a few moments more... can't he have that? 

No.

He can feel it in every fiber of what remains of his existence. 

_No_. He can't. 

“Jay, you'll make it through,” Kay tells him, finally putting space between them.

Jay smirks. “If I'm strong enough, huh?” he says, laughing at a joke Kay can't understand yet. “Not sure I can handle it, partner. But I don't exactly have a choice, do I?”

Lightning spiderwebs across the sky; real, white-hot lightning. 

“If you don't go, everything falls apart, and I'll have never met you again, never recruited you, never fallen in love.”

One of Jay's smiles finally reaches his eyes. “Well, when you put it like that.” 

It's worse returning this go-around, even as time's ever-present choking grip on him starts to ease, loosening until he thinks he could float away on the smallest of breezes. He takes one step back from the ledge. Another. One more, then he collapses so that he's pressed against a flat surface. He stares out at the city, at the sky. It's all whole again, no longer split beyond recognition. 

He tilts his head back and closes his eyes. His communicator's going off in his pocket. Outbreak at the zoo. He knows, because that's what was happening when he was last in this timeline. He chuckles, drained. Thinks about quitting. Thinks what it would be like to be a neutral, but no, he can't do that. He can't bleach Kay from his mind; the neuralyzer may take the memories, but the feelings behind them? They'd remain, and he doesn't want to lose the entire package, anyway, no matter how much the loss is killing him.

If he quits, Kay will really be gone forever. 

He won't ever do that.

He flips open his communicator without looking at it. “What's the status, Chief?” he whispers.

**Author's Note:**

> You know, usually when I try to distract myself from working on my longer pieces, I write something more lighthearted. Ummm... oops? I mean, I've wanted to write this idea out for a long while now, but... Well, it came out how I was hoping it would, but damn did I make myself sad. Back to trying to finish everything else.
> 
>  
> 
> Background music:  
> Glory -- Radical Face  
> Goodbye -- Aurora Borealis


End file.
